Reminding a returning shopper who abandoned their cart on a prior visit to your website that you have saved those carted items for them seems like an ecommerce no-brainer, right? In fact, Website Testing Wins shared a success story around such a cart recovery campaign not that long ago.

But here’s some evidence for why every company needs to test and iterate on a no-brainer idea to find the presentation that works best for its audience.

Like other ecommerce firms, this retailer greeted all cart abandoners upon their return with a lightbox that encouraged them to take another look at the products they left behind, in the hopes of rekindling their interest and motivating a purchase. But the campaign didn’t seem to generate any lift, which the retailer found surprising, so it decided to refine its approach.

Because industry research has shown that time is of the essence when it comes to converting cart abandoners, the retailer decided to limit its cart recovery campaign to those shoppers who had abandoned within the past seven days. This way, it could see if abandoned cart messaging actually does have an impact on the segment most likely to still be in-market.

The answer? Timing matters. Compared to abandoners who didn’t receive a reminder lightbox, those who were served one within seven days of deserting their carts converted 15.06% better, with an 11.96% increase in add-to-cart rate and a 13.40% decrease in bounce rate.

Good thing for this retailer that it didn’t give up on all cart abandoners, or it would have been giving up on revenue.